State Studies $1-Billion Highway Bond Issue

The Deukmejian Administration is considering sponsoring a highway finance bond measure of as much as $1 billion in 1988 to help relieve crowded streets and highways, officials said Friday.

State Department of Transportation officials, speaking at a briefing for reporters on Gov. George Deukmejian’s new transportation budget, also said that a special $250-million appropriation in highway spending proposed by the governor for the coming fiscal year will be used to reduce the impact of federal cuts and to finance previously approved highway construction.

There are no plans to use any of the $250 million on new projects to relieve traffic congestion in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the officials said.

Three Southern California legislators already have introduced legislation aimed at putting a bond issue before voters in 1988. That proposal would pump an additional $1.8 billion into the highway system over a six-year period.

Administration officials were noncommittal about the legislative proposal, introduced in the Senate this week by Sens. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) and John Seymour (R-Anaheim). In addition to the $1.8-billion bond proposal, the lawmakers are proposing that voters in each county be given the option of imposing a special 1-cent local option sales tax to finance transportation projects.

John Geoghegan, secretary of the state Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, said Administration officials are still discussing alternative approaches. He declined to discuss details.

The governor’s new budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 proposes total Caltrans expenditures of $3.2 billion. Of that amount, $1.7 billion in state and local funds will be spent on highway construction and maintenance.

Leo J. Trombatore, director of Caltrans, said the new funds will be channeled into projects approved as long as five years ago.

In Southern California, money is provided for the Century Freeway in Los Angeles, a cross-town freeway in Santa Barbara and expansion of the San Diego Freeway in Orange County.

As for the relatively new phenomenon of gridlock, which occurs when streets and highways get so congested that traffic comes to a virtual halt, Trombatore said Caltrans had been tracking the problem but has no specific solutions.

“We’re experiencing about a 15%-per-year increase in traffic, of which only about 5% is due to new automobiles, which means people are driving about 10% more than they have in the past,” he said of the growing traffic problem in Southern California.

Trombatore added, “What we’re doing is talking about how we might use the existing system better, and that might mean changing some of the ramp configurations, or adding lanes, or doing other things like moving people on buses on the freeway.”

Geoghegan said the additional appropriation of $250 million in state gasoline tax funds for highway projects will commit nearly all of the $1 billion that has been built up in the state transportation fund. He said the fund has been relatively healthy because of increased gasoline consumption by motorists and the low rate of inflation that is reducing highway construction costs.

Transportation experts, both inside and outside the Administration, agree that the state will have to spend more than it has been to keep pace with California’s growing transportation needs.

Deukmejian estimates that 15 million more cars and trucks will be on California’s streets and highways by the year 2000.

No State Tax Hike

The governor has ruled out a statewide sales or gasoline tax increase, although he supports the right of counties to impose their own transportation taxes on a local option basis.

The governor and other Administration officials have been expressing optimism that they will be successful in efforts to get an additional $700 million in federal highway user tax funds that they claim are owed to the state.

Geoghegan, while conceding that the highway system needs more money, declined to estimate what it would take to keep up with traffic growth. Estimates by private sector groups with an interest in seeing more money spent on highways have ranged as high as $1.8 billion a year.